Retaining top talent is a primary driver of success for organisations - which is why when someone decides to leave, it's pertinent to understand exactly why. An exit interview can be a great opportunity to get unfiltered insight into the perceptions of your employees. They can also be a good way to:

Understand the aspects of the business employees enjoy - the kinds of tasks, company events, initiatives and programs that are effective for building employee morale and engagement.

Understand the frustrations of employees. Exit interviews can be a good opportunity to uncover any issues within your company's culture, any managerial disagreements or issues and elements of the business that might be discouraging or distracting employees on a regular basis.

Use employee feedback to drive key changes - whether these are cultural, managerial, role or remuneration-based changes, they might be key for ensuring that you don't lose any more talent due to elements that can be improved internally.

What questions should an exit interview include?

This depends largely on the kind of organisation you run. Some key things you might want to ask include:

Questions regarding their level of satisfaction with things like remuneration, company culture, benefits, direct managers and colleagues.

The factors that impacted the employees' decision to leave.

The primary reason they're leaving.

Suggestions for improvement or things that could have made them stay within the company.

Whether they would recommend working at your company to people they know.

Tips for extracting valuable insights from exit interviews

The exit interview questionnaire should be treated as a first step for the off-boarding process. While the questionnaire itself will provide you with detailed responses and valuable data, it's also helpful to follow it up with an face-to-face meeting with the person leaving. The face-to-face meeting should be used to gain further clarification on any questions asked through the survey.

It's best to standardise questions across all exit interviews to be able to draw patterns between multiple responses. If you see a pattern of similar feedback emerging from your questionnaires, you can use it target your efforts and improve those particular experiences within the company.

It's best to keep exit interviews unbiased and not mention specific people within the company during the interview.

This exit interview template is highly customisable and can be used to include as many questions